In Command, Out of Control: Why the Best Leaders Step Back
Rajesh had four weeks to do a twelve-week job. And he solved it by disappearing. His consulting team had been engaged to migrate a client’s e-commerce platform to the cloud. The original timeline was twelve weeks — reasonable, well-planned, adequately resourced. Then, four days in, the client’s CIO called with news that changed everything: their… Continue reading In Command, Out of Control: Why the Best Leaders Step Back
The Command Nobody Typed: What Every Board Should Lose Sleep Over
Two incidents in 2026 — one in a personal inbox, one in a company’s data centre — arrive at the same place. Autonomous AI agents don’t have to malfunction to do damage. They only have to work. And what they expose is a failure of oversight, not of engineering. Early in my career, as a… Continue reading The Command Nobody Typed: What Every Board Should Lose Sleep Over
And that is the most important leadership signal of 2026 There are few things rarer and harder than the courage to look at the thing that feeds you — the product, the model, the revenue engine that built your empire — and choose to rebuild it yourself, while it is still working better than ever,… Continue reading
Why Some Messages Get Instant Action — And Others Just Sit There
Early in my career, I was working with a senior manager on an organisational initiative that required budget approval from a leader at our head office. The amount wasn’t large, but we needed the approval quickly. I drafted the email and sent it to my manager for review. He looked at it, smiled, and instead… Continue reading Why Some Messages Get Instant Action — And Others Just Sit There
What the dot-com era gets right — and dangerously wrong — about where AI is taking us
In 1999, Pets.com exemplified the pitfalls of hype overshadowing infrastructure, resulting in rapid failure. Today, AI is creating a deeper disruption than the internet did, affecting the very essence of knowledge work. Leaders must address the evolving relationship between technology and human identity, preparing for ongoing transformation rather than temporary solutions.
You Can’t Wait for Serendipity. You Have to Engineer It.
The content emphasizes that serendipity is not merely luck. It is something one can cultivate by expanding their “luck surface area” by showing up in rooms you don’t fully belong to, by sharing half-ideas before they are polished and other means covered in the article.
Continue reading You Can’t Wait for Serendipity. You Have to Engineer It.
Designing Workplaces for Human Variability
A Leadership Reflection for Women’s Day A friend recently told me about visiting a government office in Pune. When she needed to use the restroom, staff directed her down a corridor, past stacks of broken chairs and old filing cabinets, to a bathroom tucked away in a forgotten corner of the building. “I don’t know… Continue reading Designing Workplaces for Human Variability
Salubrious Dissent: What Leadership Renewals Reveal About Board Maturity
The big story in the Indian press this week is the deferment of the chairman’s reappointment at Tata Sons — involving Natarajan Chandrasekaran and questions reportedly raised by Noel Tata. It goes beyond corporate intrigue – offers a governance lens. Leadership renewals are often treated as ceremonial affirmations of past success. In reality, they are… Continue reading Salubrious Dissent: What Leadership Renewals Reveal About Board Maturity
Rewarding A While Hoping for B: Why Smart Organizations Make Predictably Poor Decisions
Have you ever promoted a “star” performer who consistently hit the numbers—only to discover, a year later, that the culture had weakened and the strategy had drifted. Or, for that matter watched a sales team smash quarterly targets on legacy products while your supposedly strategic new offering struggled for oxygen? I spent a year maxing… Continue reading Rewarding A While Hoping for B: Why Smart Organizations Make Predictably Poor Decisions
The Flow State: Unlocking Peak Performance
If you went through Engineering in India, the name Ferdinand L Singer likely triggers a specific kind of trauma. I remember sitting with his “Engineering Mechanics” for days. I read the chapters. I looked at the diagrams. Nothing stuck. The internal exams were looming, and I was staring at a wall of incomprehensible vectors. Then,… Continue reading The Flow State: Unlocking Peak Performance
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